By Rotimi Fasan

This indeed is the pertinent question to ask: whether Nigerians are ready to take on the challenge thrown at them by the oil marketers that have in the past few weeks held the rest of the country to ransom? Put differently, what the foregoing question demands of Nigerians is whether they are ready to accept the cheap blackmail of any group that is insisting on making them suffer for no apparent reason. Is it acceptable to us all that a group of apparently greedy people should hold us at the jugular- a group of common profiteers that had up until now been on the bandwagon of the merrymakers in Abuja and elsewhere, fleecing Nigerians in the name of governing them and denying them their share of our common patrimony?

Otherwise, should we not begin to call on the new government in place to take appropriate measures to rein in the destructive excesses of Nigeria’s oil marketers that are punishing Nigerians by their refusal to lift and supply oil? With their unverified claims of billions of naira owed them by the departed government of Goodluck Jonathan, these marketers have brought on Nigerians a regime of artificially induced scarcity of petroleum products to the extent that the country has been brought to a virtual halt.

This situation has gone on now for at least five weeks in a row and the effects are not at all funny. Lives are being ruined just as businesses are being sent into premature extinction. Yet, the marketers, already sated in unearned wealth, are sitting pretty in complacent greed and watching to see how much more they could tighten the noose on Nigerians before we all succumb to their wish.

While governance is a continuum and it can be said that a new government inherits both the assets and liabilities of its predecessor, the Buhari administration must closely scrutinise any claims of a financial nature being made on it by so-called creditors of the outgone government. The truth is that Nigerians have pretty little to show for whatever subsidy the former government might claim to have paid individuals or groups that operated with it in the oil sector.

As far as the claims of the marketers are concerned, even the Jonathan government disputed them. Why then should a new government that knew nothing of it carry the can? The oil marketers saw nothing wrong in doing business with a chronic debtor, like they would like us to believe the Jonathan administration was- they saw nothing wrong doing business with that administration until it became clear in the wake of the March 28 elections that another leader was due to take office, before they started throwing their unwarranted tantrums at Nigerians.

Since then, it has been a game of subterfuge and outright lies with the marketers promising with one side of the mouth to resume the lifting of oil, while threatening not to do so until they are fully paid what they claim they were owed with the other side of the mouth. Either way, oil continues to be a scarce commodity that Nigerians get at cutthroat prices. The effects of these have been passed on to consumers of other products (which are virtually all products) whose production or supply depend on the availability of oil. We are thus the proverbial children of butchers who feed on mere bones. Nigeria, the sixth largest producer of crude oil, is now a country whose citizens cannot afford a product they are supposed to have in abundance. Our oil blessing has now become a curse.

Which is why we must come together to urge the Buhari administration to stand up to these oil marketers and recognise their action for what it is- a threat to the country’s economy. No group of people should be allowed the latitude to destroy the lives of others the way oil marketers have been allowed to since they started their ‘work-to-rule’ strike in the oil sector. Enough of this nonsense from people who are millionaires several times over but who continue to pretend they are beggars scavenging for what to eat from waste bins.

It is not impossible that there were some of them being owed by the Jonathan government, but the actual amount must be determined while no room is left for anyone to make the kind of spurious claims that might have been honoured by the previous government. There is the likelihood that these same marketers now shedding false tears of owing banks large sums of unpaid loans used in importing oil for the Nigerian market, under the so-called subsidy regime, were fronts and cronies of the same government they now want Nigerians to see as owing them. They even probably made use of their connections in government to access in an unfair manner what they now claim as a matter of right.

But Buhari has no obligation to honour any potentially spurious claims that are not verifiable. But more than that, the government must begin to address the persistent scarcity of oil. There is no doubt there are many things competing for the government’s attention right now, but it cannot wait for too long before addressing those that are definitely impacting negatively on Nigerians in the immediate present.

He is already addressing the issue of insurgency in the North by his meeting with leaders of neighbouring countries in the trans-national force combating the insurgents. He must also start addressing the issue of fuel scarcity in the country before other sector workers start joining in the sabotage being obviously executed by oil marketers under the illusion that there can be no consequences since Buhari is now a politician.

I don’t know of other places but in my part of the country there seems to have been some improvement in the supply of electricity since Buhari came into office. Perhaps, this may be the honeymoon period between the electricity companies and the Buhari administration. Once they can reach their skewed conclusions from reading the signals from the oil sector, they will go back to their old ways.

The fuel situation should not be allowed to continue or we would be playing with naturalising or making an abnormal situation look normal. Already, Nigerians are beginning to say they would rather pay more for fuel than endure the stress of struggling for the commodity at fuel stations or in the black market. They are once more being compelled to improvise or make up for the inadequacies of government in order to meet their basic needs. This should not be happening in a country with leaders and under the law.